Hear me out. A few games have shader installations that will usually apply any new settings you put down AFTER you restart the game, and a lot of other games have graphics settings that will only apply after you’ve rebooted the game.
I don’t think it would cost developers ANY amount of money or any significant development time to add a “Reboot game” button (or toggle) every time the player presses the quit button, or give the player a prompt every time they change a setting that requires a game restart (like in both PC versions of GTA V).
I also think ANY game should have a “full potato” mode capable of running in older computers with NONE of the fancy graphics stuff that we have access to today, despite having a decent computer now.
Developers should spend effort vouching for a launch without startup logos. Even if supporting libraries/publishers are credited some other way, startup movies take up a lot of time when gamers launch the game many times.
Trails in the Sky has a feature where you can choose to launch the game directly into your most recent save game rather than ending up at the menus. This would be a boon for many singleplayer games, especially those with densely animated menus.
I can’t think of a setting that would universally apply to all games, like I’d be hard pressed to say a setting in Tetris that would apply to Minecraft. Vision and auditory accessibility is probably about it, but those settings would look pretty different I think depending on the game or genre of game.
Please let me invert y-axis for games where I control the field of view. Nothing takes me out of a game like suddenly staring at my feet when I try to look up.
If I’m going to put 100+ hours into a game, there better be a setting to mute BGM, because no matter how good the OST is I will eventually tire of it and want to listen to something else.
I’d love it if a group could collude on a standard for music signals.
Imagine this: You have a music player following this signal standard.
Game starts, it signals GAME_STARTED, and the media player signals STOP_GAME_MUSIC, so the game itself plays no BGM, leaving it to the music player. But, then the game can also signal later on: THEME_MENUS, THEME_EXPLORE, THEME_COMBAT, THEME_BOSS; and the media player can respond to that by cross fading between playlists built for each.
Similarly, granular audio options that separate dialogue from ambient from music from system sounds. Definitely don’t need my ears blown out just to hear dialogue.
I like having the background music very low, but not off, system sounds a bit above that, sound effects higher than system but lower than dialogue, which is maxed. And of course ambient sound levels really depend on the game and what kind of ambiance it has.
Same thing with granular contrast/gamma/etc. Don’t just provide a few preset options, especially if they can only be set before you start the game (also they should never only be set from the main menu, never). Let the player choose whatever they want on the fly. I love playing with everything bright so I can see wtf I’m doing, I don’t give half a shit if the devs think it should be so dark it’s not navigable. I disagree.
The first time I boot up the game, immediately show me the settings menu. Whether its window settings, sound volume, subtitles, or graphics settings, please do not make me sit through a long cutscene or (god forbid) make me play the game without being able to adjust settings first. Sometimes the window is screwed up, the graphics are pushing my system too hard, or any number of other issues on first boot.
I can think of 1 or 2 games that booted to settings or booted to a truncated settings menu with common settings, but I would love if this became standard for all PC games.
The ability to pause should be a requirement for single player games. Not being able to pause long cut scenes, combats, etc. is so frustrating when nobody else is impacted.
Any game completely opposed to pausing for whatever design reason should instead be required to have a minimum of 30 seconds between pauses to allow for interruptions while playing without it allowing for rapid pauses to impact game play. 30 seconds minimum is because of how many interruptions are immediately followed by another interruption by kids/spouses/parents/pets.
Watch Dogs 2 had an “invasion” system like Dark Souls, but it also allowed pausing in the world anytime you weren’t being invaded. It’s been a nice thing to point to anytime Souls fans make that excuse.
I’m sure I have seen it before, but I can’t think of a single game that lets you pause during a cutscene. It really sucks for turn-based games where you need to watch whats happening when it’s not your turn in order to respond correctly.
I remember a game I used to play years ago that had no ability to pause, so what i would do is alt+tab to the task manager and suspend the process, and then resume it later. Obviously that’s way more clunky than just hitting a pause button.
I have played a lot of games where pausing the game to get to game menus pauses cutscenes, generally ones where they use in game assets to do the cut scene. I would have to check to confirm, but I think BG3 let you pause by going to the menu and there was also a separate option to skip the cuts scene.
Definitely played a lot with unskippable cut scenes too. Mostly avoid those games now.
It’s been a very common feature for the last few years and has been very rare before that so it really depends on when you started playing new releases. I’m in my mid-30s and pausing mid-cutscene definitely happended after I stopped being excited about my birthday.
I recently started another play through of RDR2, while figuring out the settings on my old Linux gaming PC. I’d forgotten how long it is between save points during that oh-so-long first segment up in the mountains. Christ. Having to play for half an hour just to get to a point where I could save up.
Yeah no-pause feature was cool for one or two games as a gimmick, but Jesus h christ I’m an adult now and sometimes you need to freeze everything RIGHT NOW and single player games that you can’t pause are stupid as hell. Like I get maybe not pausing for accessing gear menu. But then at least give us a separate pause in case I have to run to the post office or take a business call or something
Cutscenes especially. The pause button should pause cutscenes, with an option to skip the cutscene on the pause menu. The pause button should never just outright skip the cutscene. It should always pause the cutscene.
So many times as a kid that my mom would walk in and start talking right as a cutscene started. And when I’d go to pause it, it would just skip the entire fucking cutscene instead.
Yeah, pause and skip should be separate things. I have some games pm PC where the ESC key pauses and brings up the menu but to skip the scene you have to be watching it and then hold some specific button like mouse 1 for a couple of seconds to skip. Those are my favorites because I have time to reconsider skipping!
Oh yeah that was the worst. Game devs really shooting themselves in the foot with that design.
Once paused, should it just be a single button? Maybe a menu with an “are you sure? Y/n”, or maybe a hold down one or two buttons together for a couple seconds like on consoles?
in general: settings which have multiple levels, display it as a slider so I can visually see which ones are actually maxed out and which arent. It’s insanity when most settings have off/low/med/high/higher and randomly some of them have additional levels like epic/ultra/psycho/gigaultrapseudobullshit. You have to go each and everyone through to figure out which have higher settings. Now, this is not a flex, my system can’t run new games on gigaultrapseudobullshitultra++, but older ones? sure.
for fps & tps games: FOV.
otherwise, in no particular order, option to toggle off entirely:
motion blur
chromatic aberration
otherwise, must haves:
subtitles on/off
master volume/music/sfx/dialogue as separate sliders.
don’t default volume to max, this is instant ear explosion if you happen to use different audio devices
A remove HUD options. I’d also like it if they put a big warning in the graphics section explaining how higher graphics can affect the game.
I see a lot of people bitching about lag, but if my shit connection and potato PC can run the game on low, I’m pretty sure the complainers need to reduce their expectations, accept that they don’t have a top of the line computer anymore and bring down their settings.
An option to choose what controller glyphs I want to use (Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, directional) and a option to always use those glyphs even when mouse input is detected, so I can use Gyro without the glyphs constantly flickering ☺️
I prefer the 4 circles glyphs that shows the appropriate face button highlighted. It’s device agnostic and helpful when I’m switching between playing on my Switch and playing on my PC with an Xbox controller.
I cannot name the amount of times I’ve tried to press escape and skipped a cut scene when all I’m trying to do is bring up the menu to pause. I’ll add to this ‘cinema mode’ which some games have. Let’s you go in and view cutscenes again. Should be standardized.
I also think ANY game should have a “full potato” mode capable of running in older computers with NONE of the fancy graphics stuff that we have access to today, despite having a decent computer now.
Problem is that the fancy graphics stuff isn’t just additive.
For example, raytracing is actually relatively simple to implement, since you just make light behave like it does in real-world physics, according to a couple relatively straightforward rules and material properties.
Lighting without raytracing involves tons of smokes and mirrors hacks and workarounds. For example, mirrors were often faked by building the same room behind the wall, with everything inverted, including the player character’s animations.
So, making a game with potato graphics typically requires building a second version of the game.
Of course, there can be a mode that does just turn off the additive stuff, so only that which does not require changing the game implementation. But that can just be one of the graphics presets…
Not quite a setting, but every game should be required to tell you how long ago the last save was when you quit the game. I absolutely don’t understand why it’s only a tiny minority of games that does this, it is such an obvious thing to do
I’m thinking specifically when you exit the game, and it says “Are you sure? All progress since you last saved will be lost”, it should just have an additional “(last saved 2 minutes ago)” line in there. I think the recent Spiderman games did that, iirc
Well yes and no. Stellar Blade for example. When you click exit to desktop it pops up the usual unsaved data will be lost stuff but also has a timer below it showing when the last save was made
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separe audio settings for bgm, sound effects, etc
I can’t think of a setting that would universally apply to all games, like I’d be hard pressed to say a setting in Tetris that would apply to Minecraft. Vision and auditory accessibility is probably about it, but those settings would look pretty different I think depending on the game or genre of game.
Please let me invert y-axis for games where I control the field of view. Nothing takes me out of a game like suddenly staring at my feet when I try to look up.
And x-axis, just to be thorough. Especially for third person games since they still can’t all agree on what the default should be.
If I’m going to put 100+ hours into a game, there better be a setting to mute BGM, because no matter how good the OST is I will eventually tire of it and want to listen to something else.
I’d love it if a group could collude on a standard for music signals.
Imagine this: You have a music player following this signal standard.
Game starts, it signals GAME_STARTED, and the media player signals STOP_GAME_MUSIC, so the game itself plays no BGM, leaving it to the music player. But, then the game can also signal later on: THEME_MENUS, THEME_EXPLORE, THEME_COMBAT, THEME_BOSS; and the media player can respond to that by cross fading between playlists built for each.
Similarly, granular audio options that separate dialogue from ambient from music from system sounds. Definitely don’t need my ears blown out just to hear dialogue.
I like having the background music very low, but not off, system sounds a bit above that, sound effects higher than system but lower than dialogue, which is maxed. And of course ambient sound levels really depend on the game and what kind of ambiance it has.
Same thing with granular contrast/gamma/etc. Don’t just provide a few preset options, especially if they can only be set before you start the game (also they should never only be set from the main menu, never). Let the player choose whatever they want on the fly. I love playing with everything bright so I can see wtf I’m doing, I don’t give half a shit if the devs think it should be so dark it’s not navigable. I disagree.
The first time I boot up the game, immediately show me the settings menu. Whether its window settings, sound volume, subtitles, or graphics settings, please do not make me sit through a long cutscene or (god forbid) make me play the game without being able to adjust settings first. Sometimes the window is screwed up, the graphics are pushing my system too hard, or any number of other issues on first boot.
I can think of 1 or 2 games that booted to settings or booted to a truncated settings menu with common settings, but I would love if this became standard for all PC games.
The ability to pause should be a requirement for single player games. Not being able to pause long cut scenes, combats, etc. is so frustrating when nobody else is impacted.
Any game completely opposed to pausing for whatever design reason should instead be required to have a minimum of 30 seconds between pauses to allow for interruptions while playing without it allowing for rapid pauses to impact game play. 30 seconds minimum is because of how many interruptions are immediately followed by another interruption by kids/spouses/parents/pets.
Watch Dogs 2 had an “invasion” system like Dark Souls, but it also allowed pausing in the world anytime you weren’t being invaded. It’s been a nice thing to point to anytime Souls fans make that excuse.
I’m sure I have seen it before, but I can’t think of a single game that lets you pause during a cutscene. It really sucks for turn-based games where you need to watch whats happening when it’s not your turn in order to respond correctly.
I remember a game I used to play years ago that had no ability to pause, so what i would do is alt+tab to the task manager and suspend the process, and then resume it later. Obviously that’s way more clunky than just hitting a pause button.
Conversely I can’t remember a game in recent memory that didn’t let me pause in cutscenes.
Just off of my head: Ubisoft games, Control, Shadow of Mordor, Crysis, Witchers, Borderlands 2, Devil May Cry, Celeste had it.
started Red Dead Redemption 1 last night, seems like just hitting esc during cutscene pauses it.
Admittedly I was wanting to go to settings and drop some settings, but that’s only allowed during gameplay, not cutscenes x)
I have played a lot of games where pausing the game to get to game menus pauses cutscenes, generally ones where they use in game assets to do the cut scene. I would have to check to confirm, but I think BG3 let you pause by going to the menu and there was also a separate option to skip the cuts scene.
Definitely played a lot with unskippable cut scenes too. Mostly avoid those games now.
Ghosts of Yotei lets you pause during cut scenes. It doesn’t let you skip most cut scenes, though.
It’s been a very common feature for the last few years and has been very rare before that so it really depends on when you started playing new releases. I’m in my mid-30s and pausing mid-cutscene definitely happended after I stopped being excited about my birthday.
Yeah, I’m probably what you’d call a patient gamer. Usually not playing anything more recent than 5 years old, and often way older.
I recently started another play through of RDR2, while figuring out the settings on my old Linux gaming PC. I’d forgotten how long it is between save points during that oh-so-long first segment up in the mountains. Christ. Having to play for half an hour just to get to a point where I could save up.
Yeah no-pause feature was cool for one or two games as a gimmick, but Jesus h christ I’m an adult now and sometimes you need to freeze everything RIGHT NOW and single player games that you can’t pause are stupid as hell. Like I get maybe not pausing for accessing gear menu. But then at least give us a separate pause in case I have to run to the post office or take a business call or something
Cutscenes especially. The pause button should pause cutscenes, with an option to skip the cutscene on the pause menu. The pause button should never just outright skip the cutscene. It should always pause the cutscene.
So many times as a kid that my mom would walk in and start talking right as a cutscene started. And when I’d go to pause it, it would just skip the entire fucking cutscene instead.
Yeah, pause and skip should be separate things. I have some games pm PC where the ESC key pauses and brings up the menu but to skip the scene you have to be watching it and then hold some specific button like mouse 1 for a couple of seconds to skip. Those are my favorites because I have time to reconsider skipping!
Oh yeah that was the worst. Game devs really shooting themselves in the foot with that design.
Once paused, should it just be a single button? Maybe a menu with an “are you sure? Y/n”, or maybe a hold down one or two buttons together for a couple seconds like on consoles?
in general: settings which have multiple levels, display it as a slider so I can visually see which ones are actually maxed out and which arent. It’s insanity when most settings have off/low/med/high/higher and randomly some of them have additional levels like epic/ultra/psycho/gigaultrapseudobullshit. You have to go each and everyone through to figure out which have higher settings. Now, this is not a flex, my system can’t run new games on gigaultrapseudobullshitultra++, but older ones? sure.
for fps & tps games: FOV.
otherwise, in no particular order, option to toggle off entirely:
otherwise, must haves:
A remove HUD options. I’d also like it if they put a big warning in the graphics section explaining how higher graphics can affect the game.
I see a lot of people bitching about lag, but if my shit connection and potato PC can run the game on low, I’m pretty sure the complainers need to reduce their expectations, accept that they don’t have a top of the line computer anymore and bring down their settings.
An option to choose what controller glyphs I want to use (Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, directional) and a option to always use those glyphs even when mouse input is detected, so I can use Gyro without the glyphs constantly flickering ☺️
I prefer the 4 circles glyphs that shows the appropriate face button highlighted. It’s device agnostic and helpful when I’m switching between playing on my Switch and playing on my PC with an Xbox controller.
That’s what I meant by directional, I wish more games had it!
This would be killer!
Every game should have the option to toggle motion blur off, toggle frame gen and upscaling off.
I don’t think I can name one game without a motion blur slider, or toggle.
I’m pretty sure just cause 3 didnt have an option to disable it and it was horrible. They fixed it later I believe.
Ohh, that type of setting.
One option I really appreciated in Uncharted 4 was the ability to restart cutscenes, and I wish it was in every game with cutscenes.
Pause and save during cutscenes.
I cannot name the amount of times I’ve tried to press escape and skipped a cut scene when all I’m trying to do is bring up the menu to pause. I’ll add to this ‘cinema mode’ which some games have. Let’s you go in and view cutscenes again. Should be standardized.
Problem is that the fancy graphics stuff isn’t just additive.
For example, raytracing is actually relatively simple to implement, since you just make light behave like it does in real-world physics, according to a couple relatively straightforward rules and material properties.
Lighting without raytracing involves tons of
smokes and mirrorshacks and workarounds. For example, mirrors were often faked by building the same room behind the wall, with everything inverted, including the player character’s animations.So, making a game with potato graphics typically requires building a second version of the game.
Of course, there can be a mode that does just turn off the additive stuff, so only that which does not require changing the game implementation. But that can just be one of the graphics presets…
Not quite a setting, but every game should be required to tell you how long ago the last save was when you quit the game. I absolutely don’t understand why it’s only a tiny minority of games that does this, it is such an obvious thing to do
I like this, and I think it should be complemented with a “Save and Quit to OS” button.
Like a timestamp on the save?
I’m thinking specifically when you exit the game, and it says “Are you sure? All progress since you last saved will be lost”, it should just have an additional “(last saved 2 minutes ago)” line in there. I think the recent Spiderman games did that, iirc
Ah yeah, then absolutely. Warning you that you may be fucking up and then having you quit on faith is an insane move by a dev.
Yeah exactly, but more often than not that’s exactly what happens, it’s infuriating
Well yes and no. Stellar Blade for example. When you click exit to desktop it pops up the usual unsaved data will be lost stuff but also has a timer below it showing when the last save was made